Scrolling in Help System Doesn't Work

UsRs,

When accessing help by typing, for example,
?read.table
the up and down keys do no longer scroll the help page. The page-up and
page-down keys also do not work any longer. I can scroll down by
pressing the d key, but I cannot scroll up by pressing the b key
(although it should work according to the text displayed when you press
the h key).

I'm not sure whether this question is Fedora-specific, but since this
list is most close to my configuration I first would like to know if
this can be replicated (or maybe I'm missing something obvious).

Below is more information on my computer.

Thanks,
Michael

I'm running F15 and R is from the Fedora repos.
sessionInfo()
R version 2.13.1 (2011-07-08)
Platform: x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu (64-bit)

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8       LC_NUMERIC=C
 [3] LC_TIME=en_US.utf8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.utf8
 [5] LC_MONETARY=C             LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.utf8       LC_NAME=C
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C              LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.utf8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_2.13.1
Sys.getlocale()
[1]
"LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_US.utf8;LC_COLLATE=en_US.utf8;LC_MONETARY=C;LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8;LC_PAPER=en_US.utf8;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.utf8;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C"
UsRs,

When accessing help by typing, for example,
?read.table
the up and down keys do no longer scroll the help page. The page-up and
page-down keys also do not work any longer. I can scroll down by
pressing the d key, but I cannot scroll up by pressing the b key
(although it should work according to the text displayed when you press
the h key).

I'm not sure whether this question is Fedora-specific, but since this
list is most close to my configuration I first would like to know if
this can be replicated (or maybe I'm missing something obvious).
By default, R uses "more" as a pager. You can see this by looking at 
/usr/lib[64]/R/etc/Renviron, specifically, the "PAGER" variable. If you 
wanted to switch to a pager that supports up-down scrolling, switch it 
to /usr/bin/less.

~tom

==
Fedora Project

On 08/05/2011 10:40 AM, Michael Smith wrote:
UsRs,

When accessing help by typing, for example,
?read.table
the up and down keys do no longer scroll the help page. The page-up and
page-down keys also do not work any longer. I can scroll down by
pressing the d key, but I cannot scroll up by pressing the b key
(although it should work according to the text displayed when you press
the h key).

I'm not sure whether this question is Fedora-specific, but since this
list is most close to my configuration I first would like to know if
this can be replicated (or maybe I'm missing something obvious).
By default, R uses "more" as a pager. You can see this by looking at /usr/lib[64]/R/etc/Renviron, specifically, the "PAGER" variable. If you wanted to switch to a pager that supports up-down scrolling, switch it to /usr/bin/less.

~tom
Just to add to Tom's reply, if you would prefer to use HTML help pages and view them in a browser, you can put:

  options(help_type="html")

in your ~/.Rprofile

See ?options and ?help

Regards,

Marc Schwartz
On Aug 5, 2011, at 10:08 AM, Tom Callaway wrote:

On 08/05/2011 10:40 AM, Michael Smith wrote:
UsRs,

When accessing help by typing, for example,
?read.table
the up and down keys do no longer scroll the help page. The page-up and
page-down keys also do not work any longer. I can scroll down by
pressing the d key, but I cannot scroll up by pressing the b key
(although it should work according to the text displayed when you press
the h key).

I'm not sure whether this question is Fedora-specific, but since this
list is most close to my configuration I first would like to know if
this can be replicated (or maybe I'm missing something obvious).
By default, R uses "more" as a pager. You can see this by looking at /usr/lib[64]/R/etc/Renviron, specifically, the "PAGER" variable. If you wanted to switch to a pager that supports up-down scrolling, switch it to /usr/bin/less.

~tom

Just to add to Tom's reply, if you would prefer to use HTML help pages and view them in a browser, you can put:

  options(help_type="html")

in your ~/.Rprofile

See ?options and ?help

Regards,

Marc Schwartz

Thank you so much for your feedback, I appreciate it very much. The
following commands changed the pager to less:

# cd /usr/lib64/R/etc/
# cp Renviron Renviron_backup
# sed -i 's_/bin/more_/usr/bin/less_g' Renviron

On my old F13 box, R 2.13.0 still uses "less" by default. Since "less"
is often regarded as a more sophisticated version of "more", I wonder
why this change has been made.

Thanks,
Michael
On my old F13 box, R 2.13.0 still uses "less" by default. Since "less"
is often regarded as a more sophisticated version of "more", I wonder
why this change has been made.
The change is not Fedora specific, we use the default Environ from upstream.

~tom

==
Fedora Project

On 08/05/2011 11:56 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
On my old F13 box, R 2.13.0 still uses "less" by default. Since "less"
is often regarded as a more sophisticated version of "more", I wonder
why this change has been made.
The change is not Fedora specific, we use the default Environ from upstream.

But that is generated by configure, which does

configure:for ac_prog in ${PAGER} less more page pg

so if it ends up with "more" as the default, I'd say that the test for "less" failed in the build environment. Either that or the shell itself sets PAGER to "more". 

(Conversely, you can always override it by "export PAGER=less" before starting R, or Sys.setenv(PAGER="less"), etc.)
~tom

==
Fedora Project

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Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
"D?den skal tape!" --- Nordahl Grieg
On Aug 8, 2011, at 17:13 , Tom Callaway wrote:

On 08/05/2011 11:56 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
On my old F13 box, R 2.13.0 still uses "less" by default. Since "less"
is often regarded as a more sophisticated version of "more", I wonder
why this change has been made.
The change is not Fedora specific, we use the default Environ from upstream.

But that is generated by configure, which does

configure:for ac_prog in ${PAGER} less more page pg

so if it ends up with "more" as the default, I'd say that the test for "less" failed in the build environment. Either that or the shell itself sets PAGER to "more".

(Conversely, you can always override it by "export PAGER=less" before starting R, or Sys.setenv(PAGER="less"), etc.)
Aha! Okay, so that's easy enough to fix. Not really worthy of pushing an 
update for, but I'll update the spec file in git so that on the next 
update, less will be present in the buildroot.

~tom

==
Fedora Project
On 08/08/2011 12:50 PM, peter dalgaard wrote:
On Aug 8, 2011, at 17:13 , Tom Callaway wrote:

On 08/05/2011 11:56 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
On my old F13 box, R 2.13.0 still uses "less" by default. Since "less"
is often regarded as a more sophisticated version of "more", I wonder
why this change has been made.
The change is not Fedora specific, we use the default Environ from upstream.

But that is generated by configure, which does

configure:for ac_prog in ${PAGER} less more page pg

so if it ends up with "more" as the default, I'd say that the test for "less" failed in the build environment. Either that or the shell itself sets PAGER to "more".

(Conversely, you can always override it by "export PAGER=less" before starting R, or Sys.setenv(PAGER="less"), etc.)
Aha! Okay, so that's easy enough to fix. Not really worthy of pushing an 
update for, but I'll update the spec file in git so that on the next 
update, less will be present in the buildroot.
On Fedora 14
$ grep -i pager /usr/lib64/R/etc/Renviron
## Default pager
PAGER=${PAGER-'/usr/bin/less'}

On Fedora 15
$ grep -i pager /usr/lib64/R/etc/Renviron
## Default pager
PAGER=${PAGER-'/bin/more'}

So the change happened in between.

Pierre

On Fedora 14
$ grep -i pager /usr/lib64/R/etc/Renviron
## Default pager
PAGER=${PAGER-'/usr/bin/less'}

On Fedora 15
$ grep -i pager /usr/lib64/R/etc/Renviron
## Default pager
PAGER=${PAGER-'/bin/more'}

So the change happened in between.
Best guess is that something was pulling less into the buildroot in 
Fedora 14, but it no longer does so in later Fedora releases.

~tom

==
Fedora Project